EVENTS

Video From Tuesday Night

Okay… so… as it turns out the recording by my friend Julia Rose (thank you!!!) did turn out okay. It’s definitely not very professional or fancy, as it was recorded on a phone, and this is my first ever public speaking engagement on skepticism stuff so I was rather nervous, and I’m probably going to regret letting you all see/hear the real life me (hidden behind low quality video as I am), but… to be honest, I procrastinated again, and don’t have anything better to put up this afternoon anyway.

Enjoy!

Oh, and since it’s sort of obscured in the darkness but was the only thing salvaging my manic, over-gestural demeanor, here’s a picture of the incredibly cute dress I was wearing:

In the spring of 2004, Philip Anders ingested the first of what would be a daily dose of 4mg estrogen tablets. From that moment forward, his life would change forever. During the agonizingly slow transformation from male to female, he would lose a 22 year career in journalism, his marriage, his home, his savings, and most of his friends. Faced with the specter of homelessness, he embarked on a three year adventure as an over the road truck driver.

Gypsy Moon chronicles Pamela Rose Anders’ travels across the highways of America, as well as the single most difficult journey of all; transitioning from a male to female truck driver. Packed with a medley of humorous adventures, moments of fear, loneliness and despair, terrifying encounters, bigotry, and unexpected friendships; Gypsy Moon presents an insightful view of the incredible courage and strength required to complete this journey.

You will laugh. You will cry. You will feel her anguish. You will revel in her triumph. Most of all, you will understand.

It’s reached #344 Free in the Kindle Store now! That means thousands of people have downloaded it. And the author’s website doesn’t mention the current free promotion, but does mention another one that happened in early January that I hadn’t seen at the time; hopefully it was similarly successful then too.

Thanks for sharing your talk with us! You definitely have an engaging stage presence that comes across even in such a noisy environment as a pub. I hope you get the chance to participate in more and more speaking engagements at atheist and skeptic events in the near future.

That was a good talk. For a first public talk, it was DAMN good. You had something intelligent to say, and you said it clearly. I thought the gestures were a little OTT to begin with, but only a little, and they calmed down once you got going and felt a little more comfortable. Besides, large gestures are much better than my own habit of gabbling whenever I get nervous.

Very good talk, I think. Very clear, and crisp, and concise. I have a bit of a different thought on the overall premise..I don’t think the atheist/skeptic communities have a unique sexism problem, I think that the reactions to the sexism problems that exist within society and cross into this particular domain are worse due to existing defensiveness among atheists/skeptics regarding moral blame and worth, and really hamstring our ability to deal with it.

I don’t think the strain regarding humanities studies/sociology is so much about being rational/non-rational, I think it’s more about being scientific/non-scientific. Not that I mean that as a slur against the humanities..exactly the opposite. I actually present Economics as a discipline that tries to be a science, but because the basic assumptions and the systems that it tries to study are so complex and so ever-changing, and it is things that are basically impossible to test and replicate, that to consider that it follows the “scientific method”, quite frankly is a joke.

That sociology by and large I think embraces the complexity that it’s dealing with makes it more useful.

I know you already gave us your outline, but would you be willing to post a transcript? I often rely partly on lip-reading or subtitles to hear properly, unless the audio is unusually clear (you spoke clearly, it’s just the phone recording). It sounds like you said some different things than in your outline, or perhaps were just more specific. Thanks!

Awesome video, you did an amazing job at public speaking! You had an intelligent idea, which you enunciated clearly and didn’t prevaricate about or go off on a tangent during. The hand motions at the beginning were slightly distracting (though much better than most nervous displays). The audio left something to be desired as to both volume and clarity, but it was a cell phone video, not much you can do. Love the dress too, btw.

Right now I’m my special kind of productive bored, and I want to put that to use writing a transcript for the video! I just need to know if that’s fine with everyone involved, and what to do with it when it’s done.

Yeah, if you want to do, go ahead. No worries. Just run it by me when you’re done so I can check for any transcription errors or anything that may have been misheard. I’ll think about what to do with it, I guess… it’s not all that different from the outline though, so probably not worth making a whole new post for. Maybe I’ll just attach it to next week’s “Lazy Sunday” post?